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Did you know that Super Mario Brothers shifted over 40million units in it’s lifetime, making it the best selling video game of all time? Did you know that Tekken was the first fighting game to be completely rendered in 3D, despite Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat coming out several years earlier? Have you ever wondered how classic games such as Pokémon, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil compare to their modern day sequels? Well the team at Liberty Games have embarked upon an interesting project where they delve into classic gaming franchises and compare them to their most current releases.

The list is by no way extensive, but does feature 20 famous gaming franchises covering everything from platformers to fighting games, from Half Life to Pro Evolution Soccer. The website contains franchises to suit everyone’s taste, spanning a wide variety of consoles, everything from the NES to the PS4. It’s a great place for statistics and quick facts on a range of franchises and shows how the games industry and development as a whole have changed over the years.

As well as short biographies on each franchise the website also compares the trailers from the first and last installments in the series’, demonstrating how PR and marketing have evolved over the years, as well as statistics on pricing, graphics and total sales over the game’s lifetime.

Unfortunately, it only compares the first and last game of each series but I think this is a particularly interesting concept. Hopefully, someone will use this as a starting point to compare each of the titles throughout all of the franchise’s lifetimes. It would be interesting, for example, to see whether Lara Croft’s “darker years” where she forewent exploration for shooting the place up, actually correlated with poor sales for the franchise, hence the return to the classic formula in it’s most recent titles.

At the least it’s a quick and interesting read for anyone with a fancy for some of the basics of the gaming industry. Well presented and the facts handled well. I’ll be looking out for more updates in the future.

What do you think of the concept of comparing old games with their more modern counterparts?

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